Scott Snyder Teases ‘Batman: Last Knight on Earth’ Consequences

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s New 52 era run on DC Comics‘ Batman made them two of the defining creators in the character’s history. Now they’re ready to bring it all to an end in Batman: Last Knight on Earth.

Batman: Last Knight on Earth will be released as part of the new DC Black Label line of prestige superhero comics for mature readers. Black Label releases are meant to stand the test of time and ComicBook.com spoke to Snyder about what kind of pressure that puts on him as a creator.

“You’re always really scared and nervous when you do these character,” Snyder says. “As much as I joke about having kind of gotten to a point in my career where the stakes aren’t lower but I’ve done enough now that I feel like I’m in conversation with myself where it’s less about, ‘Are they going to fire me?!’ and it’s more about how do I do something that keeps me exciting to me and to fans and not just fall into an easy groove where I’m doing more Batman to sell more copies because I know how to do Batman well enough now that I could spin my wheels and do a Joker story again. I could do those things, but I really want to stay fresh to me.”

Snyder goes on detail the secret origin of Last Knight on Earth, revealing the seed was planted by another important Batman writer.

“So that book, to me, Last Knight, in particular, I started thinking about it years ago,” Snyder says. “What happened really was I was at San Diego Comic-Con and I met Grant Morrison for one of the first times and I was completely a mess. I went through a period when I started on Batman where I was, I think, quite self-destructive. I mean, I just wasn’t ready for the pressure, and as much as I love the work, all I cared about was this work.’This book better be amazing. I’m going to put everything I have into it. I’m going to give it everything I’ve got.’ I’m up all night working on it and it hurt a lot of things. It hurt my family, it hurt friendships, and I think Grant saw that and pulled me aside and was like, ‘You’re freaking out.’ And I was like, ‘It’s Batman! It’s Batman! You know, I don’t know how you do Batman. How do I keep up?’ And he was like, ‘Here’s what you need to do. You need to give your version of Batman a birth and a death and just know it’s yours and relax. It’s your version. You’re not fighting against Frank Miller, me, or whatever to try and touch the hem of that stuff at all.’ And it was so honestly transformative for me. And so ‘Zero Year’ was the birth of our character, I wrote that right after that, and it was our origin, and this is the story I started thinking about all the way back then. It’s our death of our character. I’m not going to say he’s going to die, but it’s the end of our mythology. It takes all the pieces that we did from the Owls, the Red Hood, a lot of the thing we kind of built and kind of brings them back to show where they wind up 20 years from now.

“So I try to put horse blinders on otherwise and not worry about fan reaction and that stuff. It’s not that I don’t care because I do, I care a lot, but if I worry about it I feel like I start to get untrue to what I want to do and the times that I’ve really believed in something that seemed out there, like Metal, fans have really shown up and been supportive so I have to trust that now. I’m very proud of it. It’s way out there. It really has every character in the DCU, from Lex Luthor and Superman to surprising ones, Vixen, other characters are in it, and it takes place 25 years down the line.”

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Batman: Last Knight on Earth does not have a release date.